Along with knowing the dice rules themselves, understanding attacking and defending is the most important thing to know about Dice Mob rules. It’s all about pitting certain attacks or skills against resistance to them. A wise player will want to increase the number of dice they roll and decrease the number of dice rolled by their opponent to stack dice comparisons as much to their advantage as possible.

To improve the number of attack to defense dice ratio, a character can do a variety of things from choosing better weapons to using the element of surprise to choosing a method of attack that exploits a monster’s weakness to improving their proficiency with their go-to weapon or spell. Some of this can be done between adventures when a character levels up, some by choosing the weapons, armor, or items they are going to take with them on a particular campaign, and some can be done on the fly as they assess an encounter and make the necessary adjustments to use high ground, the element of surprise, ground cover, monster vulnerabilities, morale, magic, darkness, and other factors to turn the tide in their favor.

No matter how many advantages and disadvantages a character or monster might have, the number of dice can never be decreased below one die or increased above whatever maximum the campaign has determined.

We’ve talked a lot about attacks up until this point in this description, but we’ve labeled this section “Defense”. Why? Because a large part of categorizing attacks is by how a character might defend against them.

Defense is divided into three areas: physical, mental, and personal. And these are further subdivided as shown below into the ten defenses which will be listed on a character sheet.

• Physical
  • Force
    • Piercing (1)
    • Bludgeoning (2)
    • Slashing (3)
  • Elemental
    • Poison / Disease (4)
    • Freezing (5)
    • Burning / Acid (6)
    • Electricity (7)
• Mental
  • Cognitive (8)
  • Emotional (9)
• Personal (10)

Physical defense protects against attacks that do damage based on some external factor colliding with or reacting with a character or monster’s physical body. Defense against physical attacks is by far the most common type of defense characters will use in adventures. For convenience sake, physical attacks have been subdivided into force attacks and elemental attacks, both of which themselves are subdivided and explained below.

Fists, bullets, swords, improvised weapons, falling long distances, ceilings crashing down on characters are all examples of “attacks” requiring force defense rolls. Attacks against force defense can take a variety of forms, sometimes causing heavy amounts of surface bruising damage, sometimes causing long thin gouges in the exterior of the character, and sometimes doing small but penetrating damage that doesn’t affect much of the exterior of a character but can do significant damage to the interior. We’ve chosen to divide them in that way and name them with the following: bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing.

Why subdivide force defenses? Why not treat them all the same?

Although many times, characters and monsters are equally resistant to any form of force trauma, some types of armor or monsters might be more resistant to one versus another. For example, skeletons are highly resistant to piercing attacks (because they are just animated bones with large gaps between them) whereas they have a standard resistance to slashing and bludgeoning attacks. Other opponents, like slimes, might be resistant to bludgeoning attacks while being affected normally by slashing and piercing attacks.

Elemental defense, for lack of a better term, defend against damage based on temperature, chemical, or other similar external factors that aren’t related to force at all. Often they’re related to a character or monster’s reaction to something that their body isn’t equipped to handle. Elemental attacks are subdivided into poison or disease, freezing, burning or acid, and electricity. Any elemental attacks not listed here should be categorized to the closest matching category. Undead who might be particularly vulnerable to light, for example, would be characterized under burning.

Mental defense protects against attacks directed upon an opponent’s mind. Although they might not necessarily have any outward manifestations of damage or trauma, attacks against mental defense can be every bit as effective in turning the tide of a battle as those against force or elemental defenses can be. Magical and optical illusions can trick opponents into wasting attacks or fleeing from far inferior forces. Charm skills can make foes into friends and friends into foes. Successful attacks against mental defense can end battles without a single drop of blood spilled.

Mental defense usually takes one of two forms, protecting against the ability of the brain to do logical and cognitive processing or protecting against the alterations to the emotional state of the brain. We subdivide them thus, as cognitive and emotional.

Cognitive includes the way that the brain processes stimuli from its senses to make logical sense of what is going on around a character or monster as well as to make logical decisions based on that stimuli. Magical and optical illusions, auditory illusions, feeblemind, blindness or deafness caused by magic (as opposed to force damage), hold spells, and domination are all examples of mental attacks against cognitive defense.

Emotional also includes the way in which the brain processes stimuli, but this usually isn’t in a way to make a logical decision based on those stimuli. Instead of making a logical reaction of fleeing from a superior foe, a mother might choose to stay and fight to protect her young that wouldn’t otherwise survive or be able to flee quickly enough without her presence, even though she might also die in the process. Happiness, sadness, fear, and other emotions fit in this category, and defense against alterations to these emotions are what constitutes emotional defense. Charm, fear, and morale fall under this.

This defense is harder to categorize, but it has to do with violations against a person’s sense of self or their personal space. Often the easiest way of thinking of what this is is by thinking of what it isn’t, a defense against physical harm or a defense against mental manipulation. Polymorphing, pickpocketing, slow, weaken, and pretty much anything that harms adversely affects an opponent without causing physical or mental damage would be protected through personal defense.

In the case of an attack that affects multiple attack types, like a flaming longsword that would do both fire and slashing, or a poison bite, that does both poison and piercing, the attackers and defenders roll each attack type individually, as if they were separate attacks. The flaming sword, for example, might do three dice of slashing and three dice of fire. The defender might defend with five dice against slashing and three dice against fire.

Although it isn't always the case, many (if not most) attacks require the primary attack to be successful before any others have an effect. A totally unsuccessful snakebite would never require a character to actually make any sort of defense roll against poison. Nor would an unsuccessful attack with the flaming sword mentioned above require a flame defense if the sword itself caused no damage. Generally it should be obvious if one is dependent on another or if they both effects attack in parallel, but if not, the GM should make their best judgment.

In rare cases, a character or monster may have immunity to a certain type of attack. Attacking a fire-breathing dragon with a fireball spell, for example, is futile, assuming fire-breathing dragons are immune to fire. If an attack consists of multiple attack types, such as the flaming sword mentioned above, the fire portion of the attack would be ignored, and only the piercing or slashing of the sword would have any effect on a fire-breathing dragon.

Sometimes an attack causes damage long after the initial attack landed, including being charmed for a period of time or being lit on fire.

If the state is something cognitive, emotional, or personal, the effect generally lasts for the duration governed by the Standard Effects of Degrees and Levels section. Additional saves vs the Defense are allowed every third round of the effect (on that character's turn) to try to break free (with two successes indicating a success).

If the state is something that would cause perpetual damage, such as profuse bleeding, acid, or fire, the damage taken from the previous round is treated as another attack every round thereafter until all dice are successfully defended against or the state of the character is changed (e.g. they jump in the nearby pond to douse the fire or diffuse the acid). Five rounds of continuous fire or acid damage should generally also destroy whatever was in contact with the acid or fire.

Example: If a character is attacked by a fire-breathing dragon who rolls an attack of 10 dice the first round against the character's Burning Defense of 5 and has 6 of the attacking dice successful, the character would take 6 damage that first round. When it came to the end of the second round, if the character is still on fire (because they chose to attack instead of putting themselves out), they would have 6 dice rolled against the same Burning Defense of 5. Let's say this time they roll well and defend 5 of the 6. The end of the third round would still require a roll 1 die of Burning Attack against their 5 Burning Defense assuming they still haven't managed to douse the fire. And that all assumes that the dragon hasn't decided to blow fire a second time and start the cycle all over again.

If the state is electrical, the damage taken from the previous round is treated as another attack every round thereafter, just as in the perpetual damage case above, EXCEPT that the electricity arcs to a nearby person and they are the one who takes damage. This continues until all dice are defended against.

If the attack is freezing, the character loses one die of initiative for the duration governed by the Standard Effects of Degrees and Levels section or until they are warmed up. Freezing effects are cumulative, so three successful freezing attacks against the same character would result in three less dice of initiative. Once initiative dice reach zero, all further successful freezing attacks directed in that character reduce the character's actions by one (with the action lost chosen by the player whose character is losing the action, for simplicity's sake).